What's your definition of Chow Mein and Chop Suey? and the places you like to have it..

Question

Had not eaten chow mein in years and had an urge for old school .. remembering it as a grayish soft gloopy mess of at bean sprouts, onions, bok choy or cabbage with brown crispy noodles, slightly bubbled up or wider fried wonton strips, but hubby said its celery not cabbage. We ordered some and it was crunchy with onion, carrots and some hard stalky stuff that the waitress said was celery but wasn't, cut in strips and in a very slightly thickened chicken broth type sauce. Asked for the chow mein noodles and got straight sticks, light brown, hard like raw spaghetti 
 Have seen various descriptions of chop suey and chow mein on menus that sound reversed so I am now not sure which is which and what is shredded, cubed, or sliced... And has it all become modern and crunchy or is there any good old school stuff to drown in hot mustard and ducksauce?

Answer

Try the Shanqhai Chow Mein at China King in Chinatown and then drive to Salem to Salem Lowe and have the Chop Suey Sandwich.

Night. Day.

Both epic, both my kind of food, both make me think "ah, Boston, youre my home"

For better, for worse.

Answer

Every few years I go back to the burbs when I get a craving for the Chow mein I knew from childhood - the gloppy stuff with the chung king dried crunchy things they call noodles. I use to love, love, love this dish... then I started working in Chinatown (7 years ago now).

When I first started working here an ordered Chow Mein for lunch I would go back to my office salivating and open the togo box and saw a pile of noodles with veggies and meat... Now I crave Chow Mein, mostly from China King because I love the udan noodles. The other places that make this dish with crispy thin noodles and tons of fresh veggies are also great. 

My taste buds for Chinese/Asian/Vietnamese Food has been elevated to new highs and I am not sure I can ever return to the "Burbs" for Chinese food that has been Americanized. 

Next to the China King's Shanghai Chow Mein my other favorite noodle dish is from Montien and it's the Drunken Noodles done extra spicy. 

Get out and challenge your taste buds - get some real Chow Mein.

Answer

Check out this thread:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/629916#8826700

And this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-oyNlf4Vo_sC&dq=Chop+Suey:+A+Cultural+History+of+Chinese+Food+in+the+United+States&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3NGMU7PCMc7yoASihICYBw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA

Mr Taster

Answer

Ah, fond memories of the $.25 chow mein sandwiches from my childhood in Taunton. 

Funny, my son just went to Salem Willows and had a chop suey sandwich last week, so I'll talk about what he had. He said it was mostly celery, onion and bean sprouts in a clear, cornstarch-thickened sauce over fried wonton strips. 

He went to Fall River a while back for the chow mein sandwich, which had similar vegetables to the chop suey sandwich but had a darker gravy with some meat (can't remember if it was beef or chicken but pretty sure it was chicken) over the standard wonton strips.

Answer

NJ hound here. I am pretty interested in this topic, as I've been trying to figure out the mystery of "chow mein" for a while. 

When I was about 15 and didn't know anything about food, I flew to San Francisco to visit a friend. There, I had one of the most memorable meals of my life when he took me to a Chinese restaurant where he ordered all these exotic dishes I had never had or heard of before. The dishes: curry beef, chow fun, mapo tofu, cream of sumyunguy, and an awesome concoction of this stir fried sauce stuff over a nest of crispy noodles.

When I came back to NJ, I was able to find all of these dishes at the local Chinese takeout place, with the exception of the noodle dish. I scoured the takeout menus and found an item called "Chow Mein - w. white rice and crispy noodle" and thought aha! This must be it! So I ordered it - and it wasn't what I thought. At all.

Since then I gave up on the search until one day I went to a Chinese takeout place and saw someone eating that dish I remembered - the nest of fried noodles with the stir-fry gravy poured on top. I looked throught the menu again...and there it was - chow mein, crispy noodle. Ordered it. Nope, not the same thing.

Eventually I went back and asked what it was - they told me that dish is on the menu as "Cantonese Style Pan Fried Noodle." Mystery solved.

My interest was piqued again as I watched a documentary about General Tso's chicken where they touched on Chop Suey...I realized I had no idea what this dish was. And I read over all of the Chop Suey/Chow Mein threads on Chowhound. 

So tonight I went to a very typical/representative local Chinese takeout place and ordered both. Chow Mein and Chop Suey. Here's what I got: http://imgur.com/gdDIa2A

They are almost indistinguishable visually. The one on the left is Chow Mein, the other is Chop Suey.

The differences (as far as I can see) are as following: Chow mein includes a package of crispy fried noodles (the kind they leave on your table as a snack when dining in), and chop suey has a stronger sauce that tastes closer to the typical Chinese "brown sauce." Chow mein is quite bland in comparison. 

Otherwise the ingredients are identical except that at this particular location chop suey includes carrots and snow peas that's not present in the chow mein. I would not have known any of this had they not labeled the packages - they probably realize these two dishes are very similar.

This coincides with all of the other reports we've heard on east coast Chow Mein. Which is a shame because that crispy noodle with the gravy poured on top is awesome. It would be nice if that were to become a readily available staple here like west coast chow mein.

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What's your definition of Chow Mein and Chop Suey? and the places you like to have it..

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